The Gold Report: Bob, in our last interview in February, we had currency devaluation in Argentina and Venezuela, interest rate hikes in Turkey and South America, and a cotton and federal bond-buying program. Just eight months later in October, we’ve got Ebola, ISIS and Russia annexing Crimea plus a rising US Dollar Index. We’ve also got pullbacks in gold, silver and pretty much all commodity prices. With all this news, what, in your view, should people really be focusing in on?

Bob Moriarty: There is a flock of black swans overhead, any one of which could be catastrophic. The fundamental problems with the world’s debt crisis and banking crisis have never been solved. The fundamental issues with the Euro have never been solved. The world is a lot closer to the edge of the cliff today than it was back in February.

About ISIS, I think I was six years old when my parents pointed out a hornet’s nest. They said, “Whatever you do, don’t swat the hornets’ nest.” Of course, being six years old, I took stick and went up there and swatted the hornets’ nest, which really pissed off the hornets. I learned my lesson.

We swatted the hornets’ nest when we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. What we did is we empowered every religious fruitcake in the world. We said, “Okay, here’s your gun, go shoot somebody. We’ll plant flowers.” We are reaping what we sowed. What we need to do is leave them to their own devices and let them figure out what they want to do. It’s our presence in the Middle East that is creating a problem.

TGR: Will stepping back allow the Middle East to heal itself, or will there be continued civil wars that threaten the world?

Bob Moriarty: We are the catalyst in the Middle East. We have been the catalyst under the theory that we are the world’s policemen and that we’re better and smarter than everybody else and rich enough to afford to fight war after war. None of those beliefs are true. The idea that America is exceptional is hogwash. We’re not smarter. We’re not better. We’re certainly not effective policemen.

The Congress of the United States has been bought and paid for by special interest groups: part of it is Wall Street, part of it is the banks and part of it is Israel. We’re just trying to do things that we can’t do. What the US needs to do is mind its own business.

Bob Moriarty: We have two giant elephants in the room fighting it out. One is the inflation elephant and one is the deflation elephant. The deflation elephant is the $710 trillion worth of derivatives, which is $100,000 per man, woman and child on earth. Those derivatives have to blow up and crash. That’s going to be deflationary.

At the same time, we’ve got the world awash in debt, more debt than we’ve ever had in history, and it’s been inflationary in terms of energy and the stock market. When the stock and bond markets implode, as we know they’re going to, we’re going to see some really scary things. We’ll go to quantitative easing infinity, and we’re going to see the price of gold go through the roof. It’s going to go to the moon when everything else crashes.

TGR: How are you looking at the crash – short term, before the end of this year? How imminent are we?

Bob Moriarty: Soon. But I’m in the market. Not in the general market, but I’m in resources. There’s a triangle of value created by a guy named John Exter: Exter’s Pyramid. It’s an inverted pyramid. At the top there are derivatives, and then there are miscellaneous assets going down: securitized debt and stocks, broad currency and physical notes. At the very bottom – the single most valuable asset at the end of time – is gold. When the derivatives, bonds, currencies and stock markets crash, the last man standing is going to be gold.

TGR: So the last man standing is the actual commodity, not the stocks?

Bob Moriarty: Not necessarily. The stocks represent fractional ownership of a real commodity. There are some really wonderful companies out there with wonderful assets that are selling for peanuts.

TGR: In one of your recent articles, “Black Swans and Brown Snakes“, you were tracking the US Dollar Index as it climbed 12 weeks in a row, and you discussed the influence of the Yen, the Euro, the British Pound. Can you explain the US Dollar Index and the impact it has on silver and gold?

Bob Moriarty: First of all, when people talk about the US Dollar Index, they think it has something to do with the Dollar and it does not. It is made up of the Euro, the Yen, the Mexican Peso, the British Pound and some other currencies. When the Euro goes down, the Dollar Index goes up. When the Yen goes down, the Dollar Index goes up. The Dollar, as measured by the Dollar Index, got way too expensive. It was up 12 weeks in a row. On Oct. 3, it was up 1.33% in one day, and that’s a blow-off top. It’s very obvious in hindsight. I took a look at the charts for silver and gold – if you took a mirror to the Dollar Index, you saw the charts for silver and gold inversely. When people talk about gold going down and silver going down, that’s not true. The Euro went down. The Yen went down. The Pound went down and the value of gold and silver didn’t change. It only changed in reference to the US Dollar. In every currency except the Dollar, gold and silver haven’t changed in value at all since July.

The US Dollar Index got irrationally exuberant, and it’s due for a crash. When it crashes, it’s going to take the stock market with it and perhaps the bond market. If you see QE increase, head for your bunker.

TGR: Should I conclude that gold and silver will escalate?

Bob Moriarty: Yes. There was an enormous flow of money from China, Japan, England, Europe in general into the stock and bond markets. What happened from July was the equivalent of the water flowing out before a tsunami hits. It’s not the water coming in that signals a tsunami, it’s the water going out. Nobody paid attention because everybody was looking at it in terms of silver or gold or platinum or oil, and they were not looking at the big picture. You’ve got to look at the big picture. A financial crash is coming. I’m not going to beat around the bush. I’m not saying there’s a 99% chance. There’s a 100% chance.

TGR: Why does it have to crash? Why can’t it just correct?

Bob Moriarty: Because the world’s financial system is in such disequilibrium that it can’t gradually go down. It has to crash. The term for it in physics is called entropy. When you spin a top, at first it is very smooth and regular. As it slows down, it becomes more and more unstable and eventually it simply crashes. The financial system is doing the same thing. It’s becoming more and more unstable every day.

TGR: You spoke at the Cambridge House International 2014 Silver Summit Oct. 23-24. Bo Polny also spoke. He predicts that gold will be the greatest trade in history. He’s calling for $2000 per ounce gold before the end of this year. We’re moving into the third seven-year cycle of a 21-year bull cycle. Do you agree with him?

Bob Moriarty: I’ve seen several interviews with Bo. The only problem with his cycles theory is you can’t logically or factually see his argument. Now if you look at my comments about silver, gold and the stock market, factually we know the US Dollar Index went up 12 weeks in a row. That’s not an opinion; that’s a fact. I’m using both facts and logic to make a point.

When a person walks in and says, okay, my tea leaves say that gold is going to be $2000 by the end of the year, you are forced to either believe or disbelieve him based on voodoo. I don’t predict price; I don’t know anybody who can. If Bo actually can, he’s going to be very popular and very rich.

TGR: Many people have predicted a significant crash for a number of years. How do you even begin to time this thing? A lot of people who have been speculating on this have lost money.

Bob Moriarty: That’s a really good point. People have been betting against the Yen for years. That’s been one of the most expensive things you can bet against. Likewise, people have been betting on gold and silver and they’ve lost a lot of money. I haven’t made the money that I wish I’d made over the last three years, but I’ve taken a fairly conservative approach and I don’t think I’m in bad shape.

TGR: Describe your conservative approach.

Bob Moriarty: The way to make money in any market is to buy when things are cheap and sell when they’re dear. It’s as simple as that. Markets go up and markets go down. There is no magic to anything.

A regular contributor to Growth Stock Wire, Badiali has experience as a hydrologist, geologist and consultant to the oil industry, and holds a master’s degree in geology from Florida Atlantic University.

Here he tells The Gold Report‘s sister title The Mining Report that cheap oil prices and the economic prosperity they bring can make politicians and investors look smarter than they are. Hence Badiali’s forecast that Hillary Clinton…if elected in 2016…could go become one of America’s most popular presidents. Yes, really.

The Mining Report: You have said that Hillary Clinton could go down in history as one of the best presidents ever. Why?

Matt Badiali: Before we get your readership in an uproar, let me clarify that the oddsmakers say that Hillary Clinton is probably going to take the White House in the next election. Even Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffet said she is a slam dunk. I’m not personally a huge fan of Hillary Clinton, but I believe whoever the next president is will ride a wave of economic benefits that will cast a rosy glow on the administration.

Her husband benefitted from the same lucky timing. In the 1980s, people had money and felt secure. It wasn’t because of anything Bill Clinton did. He just happened to step onto the train as the economy started humming. Hillary is going to do the same thing. In this case, an abundance of affordable energy will fuel that glow. The fact is things are about to get really good in the United States.

TMR: Are you saying shale oil and gas production can overcome all the other problems in the country?

Matt Badiali: Cheap natural gas is already impacting the economy. In 2008, we were paying $14 per thousand cubic feet. Then, in March 2012, the price bottomed below $2 because we had found so much of it. We quit drilling the shale that only produces dry gas because it wasn’t economic. You can’t really export natural gas without spending billions to reverse the natural gas importing infrastructure that was put in place before the resource became a domestic boom. The result is that natural gas is so cheap that European and Asian manufacturing companies are moving here. Cheap energy trumps cheap labor any day.

The same thing is happening in tight crude oil. We are producing more oil today than we have in decades. We are filling up every tank, reservoir and teacup because we need more pipelines. And it is just getting started. Companies are ramping up production and hiring lots of people. By 2016, the US will have manufacturing, jobs and a healthy export trade. It will be an economic resurgence of epic proportions.

TMR: The economist and The Prize author Daniel Yergin forecasted US oil production of 14 million barrels a day by 2035. What are the implications for that both in terms of infrastructure and price?

Matt Badiali: Let’s start with the infrastructure. The US produces over 8.5 million barrels a day right now; a jump to 14 would be a 65% increase. That would require an additional 5.5 million barrels a day.

To put this in perspective, the growth of oil production from 2005 to today is faster than at any other time in American history, including the oil boom of the 1920s and 1930s. And we’re adding it in bizarre places like North Dakota, places that have never produced large volumes of oil in the past.

North Dakota now produces over 1.1 million barrels a day, but doesn’t have the pipeline capacity to move the oil to the refineries and the people who use it. There also aren’t enough places to store it. The bottlenecks are knocking as much as $10 per barrel off the price to producers and resulting in lots of oil tankers on trains.

And it isn’t just happening in North Dakota. Oil and gas production in Colorado, Ohio, Pennsylvania and even parts of Texas is overwhelming our existing infrastructure. That is why major pipeline and transportation companies have exploded in value. They already have some infrastructure in place and they have the ability to invest in new pipelines.

The problem we are facing in refining is that a few decades ago we thought we were running out of the good stuff, the light sweet crude oil. So refiners invested $100 billion to retool for the heavier, sour crudes from Canada, Venezuela and Mexico. That leaves little capacity for the new sources of high-quality oil being discovered in our backyard. That limited capacity results in lower prices for what should be premium grades.

One solution would be to lift the restriction on crude oil exports that dates back to the 1970s, when we were feeling protectionist. It is illegal for us to export crude oil. And because all the new oil is light sweet crude, the refiners can only use so much. That means the crude oil is piling up.

Peak oil is no longer a problem, but peak storage is. If we could ship the excess overseas, producers would get a fair price for the quality of their products. That would lead them to invest in more discovery. However, if they continue to get less money for their products, investment will slow.

TMR: Is everything on sale, as Rick Rule likes to say?

Matt Badiali: Everything is on sale. But the great thing about oil is it is not like metals. It is cyclical, but it’s critical. If you want your boats to cross oceans, your airplanes to fly, your cars to drive and your military to move, you have to have oil. You don’t have to buy a new ship today, which would take metals. But if you want that sucker to go from point A to point B, you have to have oil. That’s really important. There have been five cycles in oil prices in the last few years.

Oil prices rise and then fall. That’s what we call a cycle. Each cycle impacts both the oil price and the stock prices of oil companies. These cycles are like clockwork. Their periods vary, but it’s been an annual event since 2009. Shale, especially if we can export it, could change all of that.

The rest of the world’s economy stinks. Russia and Europe are flirting with recession. China is a black box, but it is not as robust as we thought it was. Extra supply in the US combined with less demand than expected is leading to temporary low oil prices. But strategically and economically, oil is too important for the price to get too low for too long.

I was recently at a conference in Washington DC where International Energy Agency Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven predicted that without significant investment in the oil fields in the Middle East, we can expect a $15 per barrel increase in the price of oil globally by 2025.

I don’t foresee a lot of people investing in those places right now. A shooting war is not the best place to be invested. I was in Iraq last year and met the Kurds, and they’re wonderful people. This is just a nightmare for them. And for the rest of the world it means a $15 increase in oil.

For investors, the prospect of oil back at $100 per barrel is not the end of the world. With oil prices down 20% from recent highs and the best companies down over 30% in value, it is a buying opportunity. It means the entire oil sector has just gone on sale, including the companies building the infrastructure.

As oil prices climb back to $100, companies will continue to invest in producing more oil. And that will turn Hillary Clinton’s eight-year presidency into an economic wonderland.

TMR: The last time you and I chatted, you explained that different shales have different geology with different implications for cracking it, drilling it and transporting it. Are there parts of the country where it’s cheaper to produce and companies will get higher prices?

Matt Badiali: The producers in the Bakken are paying about twice as much to ship their oil by rail as the ones in the Permian or in Texas are paying to put it in a pipeline. The Eagle Ford is still my favorite quality shale and it is close to existing pipelines and export infrastructure, if that becomes a viable option. There are farmers being transformed into millionaires in Ohio as we speak, thanks to the Utica Shale.

TMR: What about the sands providers? Is that another way to play the service companies?

Matt Badiali: Absolutely. The single most important factor in cracking the shale code is sand. If the pages of a book are the thin layers of rocks in the shale, pumping water is how the producers pop the rock layers apart and sand is the placeholder that props them open despite the enormous pressure from above. Today, for every vertical hole, drillers create long horizontals and divide them into 30+ sections with as much as 1,500 pounds of sand per section. A single pad in the Eagle Ford could anchor four vertical holes with four horizontal legs requiring the equivalent of 200 train car loads of sand.

Investors need to distinguish between companies that provide highly refined sand for oil services and companies that bag sand for school playgrounds. Fracking sand is filtered and graded for consistency to ensure the most oil is recovered. Investors have to be careful about the type of company they are buying.

TMR: Coal still fuels a big chunk of the electricity in the US Can a commodity be politically incorrect and a good investment?

Matt Badiali: Coal has a serious headwind, and it’s not just that it’s politically incorrect. It competes with natural gas as an electrical fuel so you would expect the two commodities would trade for roughly the same price for the amount of electricity they can generate, but they don’t. The Environmental Protection Agency is enacting emission standards that are effectively closing down coal-fired power plants. And because it is baseload power, you can’t easily shut it off and turn it back on; it has to be maintained. That means it doesn’t augment variable power like solar, as well as natural gas, which can be turned on and off like a jet engine turbine. So coal has two strikes against it. It is dirty and it isn’t flexible.

Some coal companies could survive this transition, however. Metallurgical coal (met coal) companies, which produce a clean coal for making steel, have better prospects than steam coal. Along with steam coal, met coal prices are at a six-year low.

Generally, I want to own coal that can be exported to India or China, where they really need it. Japan has replaced a lot of its nuclear power with coal and Germany restarted all the coal-fired power plants it had closed because of carbon emissions goals. We are already seeing deindustrialization there due to high energy prices. Cheap energy sources, including coal, will be embraced. I just don’t know when.

AMONG the many things still to be discovered is the effect of QE and ZIRP on the markets and the economy, writes Bill Bonner in his Diary of a Rogue Economist.

We can’t wait to find out.

The Fed has bought nearly $4 trillion of bonds over the last five years. You’re bound to get some kind of reaction to that kind of money.

But what?

Higher stocks? More GDP growth? Higher incomes? More inflation?

Washington was hoping for a little more of everything. But all we see are higher stock and bond prices. And if QE helped prices to go up, they should go back down when QE ends this week.

Unless the Fed changes its mind…

If the Fed makes a clean break with QE, it risks getting blamed for a big crack-up in the stock market. On the other hand, if it announces more QE, it risks creating an even bigger bubble…and getting blamed for that.

Our guess is we’ll get a mealymouthed announcement that leaves investors reassured…but uncertain. The Fed won’t allow a bear market in stocks, but investors won’t know how and when it will intervene next.

Last week, we were thinking about the reaction to the murder in Ottawa of a Canadian soldier who was guarding a war memorial.

There were 598 murders in Canada in 2011 (the most recent year we could find). As far as we know, not one registered the slightest interest in the US. But come a killer with Islam on his mind, and hardly a newspaper or talk show host in the 50 states can avoid comment.

“War in the streets of the West,” was how the Wall Street Journal put it; the newspaper wants a more muscular approach to the Middle East.

Why?

After a quarter of a century…and trillions of Dollars spent…and hundreds of thousands of Dollars lost…America appears to have more enemies in the Muslim world than ever before. Why would anyone want to continue on this barren path? To find out, we follow the money.

Professor Michael Glennon of Tufts University asks the same question: Why such eagerness for war?

People think that our government policies are determined by elected officials who carry out the nation’s will, as expressed at the ballot box. That is not the way it works.

Instead, it doesn’t really matter much what voters want. They get some traction on the emotional and symbolic issues – gay marriage, minimum wage and so forth.

But these issues don’t really matter much to the elites. What policies do matter are those that they can use to shift wealth from the people who earned it to themselves.

Glennon, a former legal counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has come to the same conclusion. He says he was curious as to why President Obama would end up with almost precisely the same foreign policies as President George W. Bush.

“It hasn’t been a conscious decision. […] Members of Congress are generalists and need to defer to experts within the national security realm, as elsewhere.

“They are particularly concerned about being caught out on a limb having made a wrong judgment about national security and tend, therefore, to defer to experts, who tend to exaggerate threats. The courts similarly tend to defer to the expertise of the network that defines national security policy.

“The presidency is not a top-down institution, as many people in the public believe, headed by a president who gives orders and causes the bureaucracy to click its heels and salute. National security policy actually bubbles up from within the bureaucracy.

“Many of the more controversial policies, from the mining of Nicaragua’s harbors to the NSA surveillance program, originated within the bureaucracy. John Kerry was not exaggerating when he said that some of those programs are ‘on autopilot’.

“These particular bureaucracies don’t set truck widths or determine railroad freight rates. They make nerve-center security decisions that in a democracy can be irreversible, that can close down the marketplace of ideas, and can result in some very dire consequences.

“I think the American people are deluded…They believe that when they vote for a president or member of Congress or succeed in bringing a case before the courts, that policy is going to change. Now, there are many counter-examples in which these branches do affect policy, as Bagehot predicted there would be. But the larger picture is still true – policy by and large in the national security realm is made by the concealed institutions.”

Calling the Ottawa killing “war” not only belittles the real thing; it misses the point. There is no war on the streets of North America. But there is plenty of fraud and cupidity.

Here is how it works: The US security industry – the Pentagon, its hangers-on, its financiers and its suppliers – stomps around the Middle East, causing death and havoc in the Muslim world.

“Terrorists” naturally want to strike back at what they believe is the source of their sufferings: the US. Sooner or later, one of them is bound to make a go of it.

The typical voter hasn’t got time to analyze and understand the complex motives and confusing storyline behind the event. He sees only the evil deed.

His blood runs hot for protection and retaliation. When the call goes up for more intervention and more security spending, he is behind it all the way.

US oil stocks have soared as shale pushes crude prices down. But gold…?

The UNITED STATES is doing better than it has in years, writes Frank Holmes on his Frank Talk blog at US Global Investors.

Jobs growth is up, unemployment is down, our manufacturing sector carries the rest of the world on its shoulders like a wounded soldier and the World Economic Forum named the US the third-most competitive nation, our highest ranking since before the recession.

As heretical as it sounds, there’s a downside to America’s success, and that’s a stronger Dollar. Although our currency has softened recently, it has put pressure on two commodities that we consider our lifeblood at US Global Investors: gold and oil.

It’s worth noting that we’ve been here before. In October 2011, a similar correction occurred in energy, commodities and resources stocks based on European and Chinese growth fears.

But international economic stimulus measures helped raise market confidence, and many of the companies we now own within these sectors benefited. Between October 2011 and January 2012, Anadarko Petroleum rose 58%; Canadian Natural Resources, 20%; Devon Energy, 15%; Cimarex Energy, 15%; Peyto Exploration & Development, 15%; and Suncor Energy, 10%.

Granted, we face new challenges this year that have caused market jitters – Ebola and ISIS, just to name a couple. But we’re confident that once the Dollar begins to revert back to the mean, a rally in energy and resources stocks might soon follow. Brian Hicks, portfolio manager of our Global Resources Fund (PSPFX), notes that he’s been nibbling on cheap stocks ahead of a potential rally, one that, he hopes, mimics what we saw in late 2011 and early 2012.

A repeat of last year’s abnormally frigid winter, though unpleasant, might help heat up some of the sectors and companies that have underperformed lately.

On the left side of the chart below, you can see 45 years’ worth of data that show fairly subdued fluctuations in gold prices in relation to the Dollar. On the right side, by contrast, you can see that the strong Dollar pushed bullion prices down 6% in September, historically gold’s strongest month. This move is unusual also because gold has had a monthly standard deviation of ±5.5% based on the last 10 years’ worth of data.

Here’s another way of looking at it. On October 3, bullion fell below $1200 to prices we haven’t seen since 2010, but they quickly rebounded to the $1240 range as the Dollar index receded from its peak the same day.

There’s no need to worry just yet. This isn’t 2013, when the metal gave back 28%. And despite the correction, would it surprise you to learn that gold has actually outperformed several of the major stock indices this year?

As for gold stocks, there’s no denying the facts: With few exceptions, they’ve been taken to the woodshed. September was demonstrably cruel. Based on the last five years’ worth of data, the NYSE Arca Gold BUGS Index has had a monthly standard deviation of ±9.4, but last month it plunged 20%. We haven’t seen such a one-month dip since April 2013. This volatility exemplifies why we always advocate for no more than a 10% combined allocation to gold and gold stocks in investor portfolios.

Oil’s slump is a little more complicated to explain.

Since the end of World War II, black gold has been priced in US greenbacks. This means that when our currency fluctuates as dramatically as it has recently, it affects every other nation’s consumption of crude. Oil, then, has become much more expensive lately for the slowing European and Asian markets. Weaker purchasing power equals less overseas oil demand equals even lower prices.

What some people are calling the American energy renaissance has also led to lower oil prices. Spurred by more efficient extraction techniques such as fracking, the US has been producing over 8.5 million barrels a day, the highest domestic production level since 1986.

We’re awash in the stuff, with supply outpacing demand. Whereas the rest of the world has flat-lined in terms of oil production, the US has zoomed to 30-year highs.

In a way, American shale oil has become a victim of its own success.

At the end of next month, members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) are scheduled to meet in Vienna. As Brian speculated during our most recent webcast, it would be surprising if we didn’t see another production cut. With Brent oil for November delivery at $83 a barrel – a four-year low – many oil-rich countries, including Iran, Iraq and Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, will have a hard time balancing their books. Venezuela, in fact, has been clamoring for an emergency meeting ahead of November to make a plea for production cuts.

Although not an OPEC member, Russia, once the world’s largest producer of crude, is being squeezed by plunging oil prices on the left, international sanctions on the right. This might prompt President Vladimir Putin to scale back the country’s presence in Ukraine and delay a multibillion-Dollar revamp of its armed forces. When the upgrade was approved in 2011, GDP growth was expected to hold at 6%. But now as a result of the sanctions and dropping oil prices, Russia faces a dismally flat 0.5%.

The current all-in sustaining cost to produce one ounce of gold is hovering between $1000 and $1200. With the price of bullion where it is, many miners can barely break even. Production has been down 10% because it’s become costlier to excavate. As I recently told Kitco News’ Daniela Cambone, we will probably start seeing supply shrinkage in North and South America and Africa.

The same could happen to oil production. Extraction of shale oil here in the US costs companies between $50 and $100 a barrel, with producers able to break even at around $80 to $85. If prices slide even further, drillers might be forced to trim their capital budgets or even shelve new projects.

Michael Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations told NPR’s Audie Cornish that a decrease in drilling could hurt certain commodities:

“[I]f prices fall far enough for long enough, you’ll see a pullback in drilling. And shale drilling uses a lot of manufactured goods – 20% of what people spend on a well is steel, 10% is cement, so less drilling means less manufacturing in those sectors.”

At the same time, Levi places oil prices in a long-term context, reminding listeners that we’ve become accustomed to unusually high prices for the last three years.

“People were starting to believe that this was permanent, and they were wrong,” he said. “So the big news is that volatility is back.”

On this note, be sure to visit our interactive and perennially popular Periodic Table of Commodities, which you can modify to view gold and oil’s performance going back ten years.

US growth doesn’t play well for the “apocalyptic goldbug” narrative. But for Asian demand…?

JOHN KAISER joined Continental Carlisle Douglas as a research assistant in 1982. Six years later, he moved to Pacific International Securities as research director, and also became a registered investment adviser.

Kaiser moved to the US with his family in 1994, and now produces The Kaiser Report of mining-stock analysis. Here he tells The Gold Report‘s sister title The Mining Report why “goldbugs” still expecting a US economic apocalypse might get their own disaster…

The Mining Report: At the Cambridge House Canadian Investment Conference in Toronto, you talked about escaping the resource sector swamp. Why do you call the current market a swamp?

John Kaiser: There are four key narratives that dominate the resource sector, in particular the junior resource sector.

One is the supercycle narrative where a growing global economy catches the mining industry off guard with the result that higher-than-expected demand results in higher real metal prices. That then unleashes a scramble to find deposits that work at these higher, new prices and put them into production. The juniors played an extraordinary role during that cycle in the last decade; however, global economic growth has slowed. Therefore, we are looking at a period of sideways, possibly weaker, metal prices for a number of years, which puts the supercycle narrative on hold. That is one factor keeping the sector in a swamp.

Another important narrative is the goldbug narrative, where a soaring gold price is going to make deposits much more valuable. We did see that play out. Gold reached $1950 per ounce briefly, but has since retreated 40%. Even though that’s still 400% off the low from just over a decade ago, it has turned out to be a wash in real prices. Now, growth projections in the US are having negative implications for the prevailing apocalyptic goldbug narrative. That does not bode well for an escape from the quagmire.

A third key narrative is security of supply, which we saw manifested in the rare earth [RE] boom in the past five years. However, the RE prices have come back to earth as substitution and thrifting has kicked in. The anxiety that China is going to eclipse the US anytime soon has diminished, and the concern that there will be supply squeezes around the world has diminished.

The fourth narrative, which has dominated the junior sector for two of the past three decades, is that of discovery exploration. Unfortunately, there have not been many very good discoveries in the past decade that have inspired confidence in the retail sector. Add to that the structural changes in the financial services sector that make it increasingly difficult for junior public companies to source retail investor capital.

These are the forces that are keeping gold – and junior mining equity – prices bogged down.

TMR: Let’s look at each of those narratives a little bit closer to determine what they mean for junior mining companies. If China’s growth is slowing and the US recovery remains hesitant, what does that mean for base metals – copper, nickel, iron and zinc?

John Kaiser: In the last decade, juniors have made a career of picking up deposits found in past exploration cycles and discarded as marginal because the grade wasn’t high enough. The juniors did a tremendous job of reevaluating their potential based on new prices and technology. That led to $140 billion worth of takeover bids, compared to the $5bn per decade in the 1980s and 1990s. These deposits now sit as inventory in the big mining companies.

That means when we get another price boom, the big mining companies will develop these projects to supply the demand surge, not acquire juniors that claw a new batch of discarded deposits out of the closet. Investors interested in juniors with advanced deposits will have to focus their attention on an existing pool of juniors that will shrink as they disappear through buyouts or mergers with very modest premiums off cyclical market lows.

TMR: Would you apply that scenario to all of the base metals?

John Kaiser: Copper and iron are the ones that are faced with oversupply in the next couple of years. Nickel is a special situation because it was being oversupplied until Indonesia imposed an export ban on raw laterite ore. The Philippines is contemplating doing something similar. Should this come to pass, then we will have temporary shortages of nickel, and we could see nickel prices going higher. But if Chinese capital builds the capacity to smelt the nickel laterite ore in Indonesia and the Philippines, then we will see weak nickel prices.

The one metal I think will realize higher prices in the next few years is zinc. That is because major mines have started to shut down, and what is coming onstream is considerably less capacity than what is shutting down. Normally, that doesn’t really matter because China has been the elephant in the room, the largest zinc producer. China has nearly doubled its production in the past decade. The prevailing view is that if we get a higher zinc price, China will move quickly to put more mines into production. However, I believe, due to a new environmental focus, the country could actually shut down some of its capacity, worsening the supply situation.

TMR: Let’s go back to your themes. The second one was the goldbug theme. The Federal Reserve is betting that the US economy is good enough to handle rising interest rates as part of a push to jumpstart the global economy. What could this mean for the supercycle we talked about and the apocalyptic goldbug narrative and the companies in the metals space?

John Kaiser: If the Fed successfully finesses the transition from quantitative easing and low interest rates to an economy based on positive real short-term interest rates, then we will see the consumer start to feel more comfortable with the future and spend money. Businesses would then start spending the trillions of Dollars they are now hoarding or spending on share buybacks to prop up stock prices.

If they shift to building stuff again for the long run, which employs people with quality jobs and signals optimism about America’s economic future, then the banks become happy and will start lending money to consumers. It creates a virtuous circle where the economy grows organically rather than artificially. This is also good for the rest of the global economy because it will enable emerging markets to hitch their wagon back to the US as a primary export destination and, ultimately, as a flow of capital back to their own economies to fund self-sustaining economic growth.

A smooth transition to real growth is bad news for the goldbug narrative because if we have higher interest rates and, thus, better yields, that makes gold – which yields nothing – not very competitive. A strong Dollar also clashes with the idea that everything is falling apart and, therefore, gold is going to go up due to resulting hyperinflation and fiat currency debasement.

But if the Fed is wrong and it merely succeeds in popping a stock bubble and the Dow Jones drops more than the 10-15% that would qualify as a healthy correction, unleashing another asset deflation spiral similar to 2008, then we end up in a very negative scenario for the global supercycle narrative and for the goldbug narrative because gold goes down in a liquidity crunch. Either outcome creates an argument for gold dropping through that $1180 per ounce resistance level and touching $1000 per ounce on the downside.

TMR: Are you predicting $1000 per ounce gold?

John Kaiser: I see $1000 per ounce as a temporary aberration except in the worst case scenario of a global depression. Today 1980’s $400 per ounce gold adjusted for inflation is $1120 per ounce, so $1200 per ounce is just a 9% real gain. That is sobering when you consider the mining industry extracted 2.3 billion ounces over the last 30 years on the back of gold’s big move during the 1970s. As this low hanging fruit got harvested, mining costs rose, even more so than general inflation during the past five years.

All-in cost estimates average $1350 per ounce for new gold, partly due to higher mining costs, but also due to lower grades, more difficult metallurgy and social license costs. A gold price in the $1000-1200 per ounce range implies that the world going forward will be content with the existing 5.4 billion ounce aboveground gold stock plus the billion extra ounces existing mines will produce as they deplete over the next decade.

As an optimist about global economic growth, I find that hard to believe. If the end of quantitative easing and the arrival of higher real interest rates gives the American economy organic growth legs, rather than sending it into a tailspin that requires the Fed to put it back on life support, it will pull the global economy back into an uptrend with resource-hungry emerging economies with large population bases as the long-term growth engines.

While your typical North American goldbug owns gold to hedge against catastrophe and a possible capital gain trade, new wealth in emerging nations seeks gold ownership as a form of saving and wealth insurance. This gold is not generally for sale. In my view, global economic growth is a plausible driver for higher real gold prices. The question is how long can gold hang around at price levels where it does not make economic sense to mobilize new gold mine supply?

What would jumpstart an uptrend in gold is China announcing its actual reserve holdings, which were last reported in 2009 as 1,054 tonnes. Since then China has produced about 2,000 tonnes and because the central bank is the official buyer of domestic gold production, China’s official gold holdings are likely over 3,000 tonnes, just behind Germany at 3,384 tonnes. China has also been a heavy importer of gold since its breakdown in 2013, possibly over 1,000 tonnes. That would put China in second place, halfway to America’s official holdings of 8,134 tonnes. China sees as the long game the eventual end of the US Dollar as the world’s single reserve currency.

For now China is more than happy to see weak gold prices and is unlikely to harm its gold accumulation agenda by updating its official reserve holdings. But if it did, that would make investors think twice about selling the gold they already own and increase demand for more, which would lead to a higher gold price. A shortage could push gold to $1500 per ounce without excessive inflation or fiat currency debasement. It would also underpin a new bull market in the juniors, especially if the American economy is back on track and the dominant gold narrative is no longer one that just promises higher gold prices without enhanced mining profitably.

TMR: We’ve talked before about the fact that during this downturn, a lot of companies were going to either disappear or be reduced to walking dead on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the TSX Venture Exchange. Is one of the bright spots of the market today that it’s easier to tell the good companies from the bad?

John Kaiser: Yes and no. Just under 600 companies out of 1,700 have more than $500,000 working capital and aren’t in the big mining company league. Some 300 have between $0 and $500,000 working capital, and about 700 have negative working capital of about $2B. The negative working capital ones are pretty much dead in the water because no one wants to give them real money to replace money that’s already been spent. You may find a few companies among them with interesting stories that are worth salvaging. But most of the indebted companies are going to wither away and disappear.

That leaves about 900 companies with potential to survive. Among those, I gravitate toward the ones that have real management teams – technical personnel who know something about exploration – and projects with a story indicating that the brains of management are actually at work and that they are not just going through the motions of pretending to explore. Some companies are sitting on piles of money where management is collecting big salaries but because they have large shareholders who are treating the company simply as a keg of dry power for extremely bad times, they do not have the go-ahead to do anything along the lines of serious exploration that would risk the capital but also put the company in a position to deliver a substantial reward. One also has to be careful about those companies because they represent opportunity cost.

But, in general, it is now easier to see companies that are doing something and distinguish those from the rest because the inability to finance and the poor financial condition of most of the resource juniors make it very clear that they have nothing and are doing nothing. There is no reason to invest even a penny in such zombie companies.

The Fed is ending QE. And it could hike short-term interest rates as soon as next year. The EZ money is getting scarce.

“We are trapped in a cycle of credit booms,” writes Martin Wolf in the Financial Times.

Wolf is wrong about most things. But he is not wrong about this.

“On the whole,” he writes, “there has been no aggregate deleveraging since 2008.”

Wolf does not mention his supporting role in this failure. When the financial world went into a tailspin, caused by too much debt, in 2008, he joined the panic – urging the authorities to take action!

As a faithful and long-suffering reader of the FT, we recall how Wolf howled against “austerity” in all its forms.

His solution to the debt crisis?

Bailouts! Stimulus! Deficits! In short, more debt!

Since then, only America’s household and financial sectors have deleveraged…and only slightly. Businesses and government have added to their debt.

Overall, the world has much more debt than it did six years ago – more than $100 trillion worth.

Wolf has come to realize where his own misguided policy suggestions lead.

As a recent paper by banking think tank the International Center for Monetary and Banking Studies put it, fighting a debt crisis with more debt leads to a “poisonous combination of higher and higher debt and slow and slowing real growth.”

That is the world we live in. Thanks a lot, Martin.

The future is a blank slate. It whacks us all – but differently, depending on how exposed we are. What can we do but try to protect our backs…and squint, peering through the glass darkly ahead.

“These credit booms did not come out of nowhere,” writes Wolf. “They are the outcome of previous policies adopted to sustain demand as previous bubbles collapsed.”

Well, end of one CBGA, start of another. Which says a lot about the Eurozone crisis…

THIS isn’t your father’s gold market, writes Adrian Ash at BullionVault. It isn’t even the same market as 10 years ago.

Because the buyers are different. So too are the sellers.

During the 1970s, demand was led by investors…primarily in the rich West. Whereas today, the biggest buyers by far are Asian consumers, as the World Gold Council notes in its latest Gold Investor report.

Despite much lower incomes, India and China save a huge proportion of their earnings…and spend an ever greater share on gold the more income they earn.

This makes it a “superior good” says Professor Avinash Persaud. Commissioned by the World Gold Council to study world gold buying demand, he says it increases faster than household income or GDP…something we’ve noted of Chinese gold demand before.

On the supply side too, the gold world has changed. Besides a small rise to record mining output, the key source of the last 5 years was “scrap” sales from people needing to raise cash amid the financial crisis (a flow that’s now drying up. Fast). During the 1980s and 1990s, in contrast, central banks were the big source of existing above-ground metal, selling it down as prices fell…and worsening the drop by helping gold miners “hedge” their production by lending them metal to sell as well.

Instead of the gold, Western central banks bought more “productive” assets. You know, like US Dollars, Euros, and government debt.

Come the financial crisis however, central banks as a group worldwide turned into net buyers for the first time since the mid-1960s. First because emerging-market nations wanted to lose some of the Dollars piling up in their vaults (thanks to America’s perpetual trade deficit). Second because Western central banks…most notably in Europe…decided that selling gold during a crisis isn’t so clever.

So, despite having an agreement in place to cap annual sales…aimed at avoiding the clumsy, price-damaging gold sales made by the UK in 1999…central banks in the West have stopped selling gold altogether. We think that’s likely to stay true all through the new 5-year agreement, signed in May and running from tomorrow until September 2019.

The current CBGA (as we gold nerds know it) has seen European states sell barely 10% of their agreed limit. The new agreement doesn’t bother setting a cap at all. That might suggest they’re secretly planning big sales in future. But on the contrary, the lack of sales under the current CBGA made its 400 tonnes per year limit look stupid.

Fewer than 18 tonnes were sold over the last 3 years in total…all of them from the German Bundesbank to mint commemorative coins.

Just what would be the point of setting a sales limit from here? Fact is, central banks sell gold when times are good. They buy or hold when things are bad. They are not selling today.

We don’t think Eurozone central bank chiefs have any plans to sell until 2019 at the soonest. We do think there’s a message in there about the Eurozone crisis.

Is the POST-COLD WAR global boom over? asks Donald Coxe, chairman of Coxe Advisors LLC, and a consultant to The Casey Report from Doug Casey’s research group.

Since the fall of Bolshevism, the world has seen remarkably sustained growth in international cooperation, brought about by freer trade and new technologies. Financial assets have generally performed well, increasing prosperity across most of the world. There were just two major interruptions – the tech crash in 2000, and the financial crash in 2008.

The world warmed up fast after the Cold War. Prices of most commodities rose, despite major corrections:

Oil climbed from $15 per barrel to as high as $140. It collapsed with the crash, but climbed back swiftly to near $100;

Corn climbed from $2 to as high as $8 before sliding to $3.60;

Copper climbed from 80 cents to $4.30 before sliding to $3

Gold shot up from $350 to $1900 before pulling back toward $1200.

So what’s happening with commodity prices now? Is this just another correction, or has the game really changed?

Commodity prices have risen against a backdrop of falling interest rates:

The US 10-year Treasury yielded 8% as recently as 1994, and as low as 2.1% during the crash. Recently the consensus target was 4% – before fears of outright deflation drove it to 2.4%. Bond yields have fallen below 1%. Even the bonds of the southern members of the Eurozone yield Treasury-esque returns.

Remarkably, those low yields persist even as major geopolitical outbursts have ended the mostly benign post-Cold War era. The foundations of global economic progress are being shaken by geopolitical earthquakes from Russia and Ukraine to Syria and Iraq, where a new caliphate has been proclaimed.

It seems bizarre, but the world is heading toward a revival of both the Cold War and the Ottoman Empire.

Unfortunately, these concurrent crises are occurring at a time when the great democracies’ leaders bear scant resemblance to those leaders responsible for the end of the Cold War and the launch of global cooperation and free trade: Reagan, Thatcher, and George H.W.Bush.

Mr.Obama won his nomination by voting against the invasion of Iraq. He ran on the promise of ending wars, not starting them. Now, faced with sinking popularity in an election year that could give Republicans complete control of Congress, he naturally fears dragging America into the ISIS chaos – or Ukraine.

Obama is also haunted by the collapse of his most daring and creative foreign policy achievement – the reset with Russia. Mr.Putin has doubled down on his Ukrainian attacks by warning that Russia should be taken seriously, because it is a major nuclear power and is strengthening its nuclear arsenal. Those with long memories recall Khrushchev banging his shoe at the United Nations and shouting, “We will bury you!”

Meanwhile, Western Europe’s leaders show few signs of being prepared for either crisis. Angela Merkel, raised in East Germany, is cautious to a fault. British Premier David Cameron is struggling to prevent Scottish secession and to deal with the likely return of hundreds of ISIS-trained British citizens. (Military analysts generally agree that well-funded returnees with ISIS training are much greater threats than Al Qaeda ever was…yet Cameron has failed to convince his coalition partner to support restraining their re-entry into British Muslim communities.)

The backdrop for long-term investing has, in less than a year, swung from promising to promises broken by wars and threats of more-terrifying wars.

Another unlikely threat is deflation. When central bankers have been running the printing presses 24/7…?

Most economists, strategists, and investors would have deemed deflation a near-impossibility with government debts at all-time highs, funded by money printed at banana-republic rates. Who thought that the Fed would quadruple its balance sheet? And who dreamt that such drastic policies would be sustained for six years and would be accompanied by outright deflation in much of Europe and minimal inflation in the USA?

So why have Brent oil prices fallen from $125 in two years despite production outages in Syria and Libya and repeated cutbacks in Nigeria? Are Teslas taking over the world?

The answer is that the US is once again #1 in oil production, thanks to fracking (in states that allow it). Mr.Obama likes to boast about the new US oil boom, but he has been a bystander to this petro-revolution. According to an oil company executive interviewed in theNew York Times last week, without fracking, global oil prices might be at $200 a barrel, and the world would be in a deep recession. He’s a Texan and thus inclined toward hyperbole, but his point is directionally valid.

US frackers – deploying advances in science and technology with guts and skill – have averted fuel inflation. And farmers, using the tools of modern agriculture – GMO and hybridized seed, farm machinery equipped with GPS and logistics, and carefully monitored fertilizers – have combined with Mother Nature to unleash record crops of corn and soybeans. So much for food inflation.

Capitalism is doing its job: to expand output of goods and services, thereby preventing shortages from derailing recoveries through inflation. That success story means central bankers can keep printing away.

So what should investors do? The S&P’s rally has been sustained through near-zero-cost money used to:

buy back stock to enrich insiders and please activist hedge funds which have borrowed big to buy big; and

prop up the overall market because investors have learned that buying on margin when the costs are minimal – and below dividend yields – just keeps paying off.

Gold loses its luster when inflation seems to be as remote as a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It also loses appeal if even a concatenation of crises fails to send investors rushing into the time-tested crisis consoler.

We had predicted in February that 2014 would be the year of increasing geopolitical risks that would challenge conventional asset allocations. We see geopolitical risks expanding from here – not contracting – and stick to our investment advice that the broad stock market is precariously valued. A range of options is available for those who wish to hedge themselves against even worse news.

Gold is part of any such risk mitigation. So are long government bonds.

Most importantly, we have entered an era when wise investors will devote as much time to reading the foreign news as they allocate to reading the investment section.

AMERICA’s attention recently turned away from the violence in Iraq and Gaza toward the violence in Ferguson, Missouri, following the shooting of Michael Brown, writes former US Congressman Ron Paul.

While all the facts surrounding the shooing have yet to come to light, the shock of seeing police using tear gas (a substance banned in warfare), and other military-style weapons against American citizens including journalists exercising their First Amendment rights, has started a much-needed debate on police militarization.

The increasing use of military equipment by local police is a symptom of growing authoritarianism, not the cause. The cause is policies that encourage police to see Americans as enemies to subjugate, rather than as citizens to “protect and serve.” This attitude is on display not only in Ferguson, but in the police lockdown following the Boston Marathon bombing and in the Americans killed and injured in “no-knock” raids conducted by militarized SWAT teams.

One particularly tragic victim of police militarization and the war on drugs is “baby Bounkham”. This infant was severely burned and put in a coma by a flash-burn grenade thrown into his crib by a SWAT team member who burst into the infant’s room looking for methamphetamine.

As shocking as the case of baby Bounkham is, no one should be surprised that empowering police to stop consensual (though perhaps harmful and immoral) activities has led to a growth of authoritarian attitudes and behaviors among government officials and politicians. Those wondering why the local police increasingly look and act like an occupying military force should consider that the drug war was the justification for the Defense Department’s “1033 program”, which last year gave local police departments almost $450 million worth of “surplus” military equipment. This included armored vehicles and grenades like those that were used to maim baby Bounkham.

Today, the war on drugs has been eclipsed by the war on terror as an all-purpose excuse for expanding the police state. We are all familiar with how the federal government increased police power after September 11 via the PATRIOT Act, TSA, and other Homeland Security programs. Not as widely known is how the war on terror has been used to justify the increased militarization of local police departments to the detriment of our liberty. Since 2002, the Department of Homeland Security has provided over $35 billion in grants to local governments for the purchase of tactical gear, military-style armor, and mine-resistant vehicles.

The threat of terrorism is used to justify these grants. However, the small towns that receive tanks and other military weapons do not just put them into storage until a real terrorist threat emerges. Instead, the military equipment is used for routine law enforcement.

Politicians love this program because it allows them to brag to their local media about how they are keeping their constituents safe. Of course, the military-industrial complex’s new kid brother, the law enforcement-industrial complex, wields tremendous influence on Capitol Hill. Even many so-called progressives support police militarization to curry favor with police unions.

Reversing the dangerous trend of the militarization of local police can start with ending all federal involvement in local law enforcement. Fortunately, all that requires is for Congress to begin following the Constitution, which forbids the federal government from controlling or funding local law enforcement. There is also no justification for federal drug laws or for using the threat of terrorism as an excuse to treat all people as potential criminals. However, Congress will not restore constitutional government on its own; the American people must demand that Congress stop facilitating the growth of an authoritarian police state that threatens their liberty.

THERE is talk of a new cold war, pitting the United States against the Russian Federation, with Europe being a main battleground where both adversaries’ grievances are playing out, writes Amine Bouchentouf – author of Commodities for Dummies, a partner at Parador Capital LLC, and founder of Commodities Investors LLC – at Hard Assets Investor.

This was the state of affairs between America and Russia for decades, following the end of World War II up until the collapse of the Soviet Union. Many of the battles that were played out in the 1970s and 1980s are now repeating themselves, characterized by periods of “détente” and “escalation” of tensions.

We are currently in one of those phases of “escalation,” where both adversaries are digging in their heels and firing “testing shots” to see the reaction of the other. The stakes are high, especially for the commodities markets, particularly the oil and natural gas markets.

Vladimir Putin claims that the greatest tragedy of the 20th century was undoubtedly the collapse of the Soviet Union. Ever since Putin came to power, his laserlike focus has been on creating a stronger Russia, flexing its muscles and spreading its influence regionally and globally. Ironically, one of the main factors that allowed him to do this has been the global boom in commodities.

Russia is undeniably a resource-rich country and has ridden the commodities boom to the fullest extent, benefiting from the sale of key raw materials such as crude oil, natural gas, aluminum, iron ore, coal and nickel.

This natural resource powerhouse saw its cash coffers grow exponentially as countries such as India, China and even Europe consumed and purchased its raw materials. As its commodities sales increased, so did Russia’s influence in world affairs including in military technology, espionage and industry.

Russia’s influence kept increasing as the months and years went on. First, Russia’s influence on the crucial Middle East was felt in Syria as Russia supported and backed Bashar Assad with weapons and military intelligence against American-backed insurgents. Assad remains in power while the insurgency is weak, fragmented and uncoordinated.

Russia scored another major coup when it lured Edward Snowden, the former NSA employee responsible for the greatest intelligence leak in American history. More than the symbolism of the act (that America’s most-wanted former intelligence officer is living in Russia), the treasure trove of information Snowden is suspected of giving to Russia could be game changing.

The Kremlin’s most in-your-face move came on the heels of the Sochi Winter Olympic Games, when Russia unilaterally annexed Crimea, a region under the territorial jurisdiction of Ukraine. And to add insult to injury, Russia is sending military personnel and equipment into Ukraine to arm pro-Russian separatists.

These same separatists are now suspected of downing a commercial civilian Malaysian Airlines Flight flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur last month. This event seems to have been the last straw for the United States and its allies, and has resulted in the US and EU imposing economic sanctions on Russia.

Recently, President Obama announced sanctions aimed mostly at Russia’s oil industry. The thinking at the White House and with its allies is that the administration would like to target the source of wealth that is expanding the Kremlin’s influence: natural resources, primarily crude oil.

While the logic is sound, in reality, these new sanctions are going to have very little impact on the Russian economy and therefore Russian behavior in the international scene. When you examine the sanctions closely as released by the Commerce Department, you quickly realize that the sanctions are targeted at future projects aimed at increasing Russian production of unconventional crude supplies, primarily located in the Arctic.

The sanctions are aimed at preventing Western-based technology from making its way into Russian hands to develop these fields. In practice, these fields are several years from reaching production (in most cases, five to seven years out) and so will not have any immediate impact on current Russian production.

Russia produces about 10 million barrels of oil per day (greater than Saudi Arabia) and exports a vast majority of that. The sanctions do not target this current production; the Brent crude benchmark was little changed as these sanctions were announced.

In addition, it’s very relevant to note that Russian gas production was completely left out of the sanctions list – not a coincidence since a material amount of Europe’s gas supplies come from Russia.

Russia Oil Production (mmbbl/d)

The bottom line is that these sanctions will do very little to influence Russian behavior on the world stage. When looked at through the prism of the last two years, these sanctions amount to very little more than a slap on the wrist.

For investors and traders, this means that production of Russian commodities (an important factor in the marketplace) will remain intact. Therefore, I would not advise going long crude oil or commodities thinking that the latest sanctions are going to take away critical supply from the market – it won’t.